Sixteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

The Bridging Design Prototype (BDP) approach strengthens the link between design, technology, and business in small organisations that are developing products for enabling novel practices. A BDP is a rapid functional prototype built with features familiar to a user community and with novel features that a designer incorporates after careful analysis of relevant data. It capitalises on a user community’s prior knowledge and recognises their context realities. These characteristics bring users into a development process early because they accept to incorporate a BDP into their real activities. While a designer or R&D team use it for learning about the context, community, and practice. As an applied design researcher, the author has experienced first hand the little awareness of design as a strategic resource, the little trust small organisations have on the evidence we present, and how the late arrival of the role of design into a project brings issues to light. These issues are recognised as important, but often, small organisations say it is too late to resolve them in products soon to be launched. Through the implementation of BDPs, small organisations experience first hand how the role of design helps to shape strategy and establish the value of new product concepts before costly implementations are undertaken, as it should be done in ideal human centred development processes. Two cases are used to illustrate how BDPs were adopted as part of early product development and generative design research.